November 13, 2009

In most professions, one goes through intense training—intended to help a person develop the ability to act on instinct—where the body learns to act automatically in response to a situation without the need to mentally go through each required step.

Even in everyday living, we’ve learned to adapt to our environment that allows us to perform basic functions without losing focus on the task at hand. Examples are dialing a familiar phone number, or adjusting the radio in your car. I’ve seen teenagers (like my own for example) who can literally unholster their mobile phone, send a text, and reholster the phone faster than Neo can dodge a bullet (all while holding a conversation).

When using Illustrator, you want to get to a point where basic functions become instinct – you do them without thinking about it. That’s a power move. In the title of this article, I referenced ten such moves, but the truth is, I’ve broken these down into ten specific feature areas, encompassing far more than just ten power moves—well over 30 in fact. I list Mac OS keyboard shortcuts, followed by Windows equivalents in square brackets.
If you’re serious about becoming an Illustrator speed demon, learn these power moves. Don’t just read them—practice them again and again. Force yourself to use them—even if it takes longer the first few times you do it. Trust me, you’ll thank me later. In yet another Matrix reference, “What are you waiting for? You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are… know you are…”.

MASTER THE NUDGE
This has nothing to do with your spouse (or your mouse for that matter). In Illustrator, using the arrow keys on your keyboard (up, down, left, right) to move your objects in small increments is called “nudging”. The default increment amount is 1pt (.0139 inches), but you can choose a value more relevant to your task at hand. For example, if you’re working in scale, use a number that is easily divisible. Or use specific amounts, like .0625 inches, so you can tap the arrow key 4 times in quick succession and know you’ve moved the object exactly .25 inch. I’ll often adjust the increment value several times a day, as needed.

Cmd-K [Ctrl-K]: Opens the preferences panel and highlights the keyboard increment field. Just enter a numeric value and hit the Enter key to change it.Arrow: Nudges selected artwork the amount specified in the Preferences dialog.Shift-Arrow: Nudges selected artwork 10x the amount specified in the Preferences dialog.Option-Arrow [Alt-Arrow]: Nudges a copy of the selected artwork the amount specified in the Preferences dialog.Shift-Option-Arrow [Shift-Alt-Arrow]: Nudges a copy of the selected artwork 10x the amount specified in the Preferences dialog.

ALIGN WITH INTELLIGENCE
With Illustrator CS4, you can snap an object’s boundaries to other objects or guides (previous versions only allowed you to snap your cursor to other objects or guides, requiring you to grab objects by their edges or anchor points). To get this to work, however, you have to have Smart Guides turned on—a feature that many find annoying or too “in your face”. Rather than get rid of it, learn to control it. First, open the Smart Guides preferences panel and uncheck all boxes except for Alignment Guides, then press OK. Now you can use a keyboard shortcut to turn Smart Guides on and off as you need it.

Cmd-U [Ctrl-U]: Toggles Smart Guide behavior on and off.

SELECT FASTER
We probably make use of the Selection tools in Illustrator more than anything else, so it’s important to get familiar with NOT constantly switching between them. Instead, learn to use the shortcuts to make them all behave as one cohesive unit.

On the subject of making selections it can often be easier to select art without using tools at all:

Cmd-A [Ctrl-A]: Select all.Shift-Cmd-A [Shift-Ctrl-A]: Deselect all.

CHANGE OBJECT ATTRIBUTES
How many times do you apply a color only to realize you adjusted the stroke when you meant the fill? How many times do you just want to get an object back to a white fill and a black stroke? Don’t answer—just learn the power moves:

D: Resets an object’s appearance to white fill, 1pt black stroke.X: Toggles the focus between Fill and Stroke.Shift-X: Swaps the colors of an object’s fill and stroke./ : Applies the None attribute.Cmd-/ [Ctrl-/]: Applies a new fill (via the Appearance panel).Shift-Cmd-/ [Shift-Ctrl-/]: Applies a new stroke (via the Appearance panel).

ADJUST STACKING ORDER
I cringe every time I see someone move their mouse up to the Object menu every time they want to bring an object to the front or send it to the back. Due to the stacking nature of vector graphics, these power moves are essential. While there are four possible settings here, the most important ones to remember are Bring to Front and Send to Back.

LOCK AND LOAD (AND HIDE)
Complex artwork—especially those laden with multiple masks—can make for difficult selections. While the new isolation behavior in Illustrator CS4, which allows you to double click on any object to temporarily lock it and bring it to the top of the stacking order, is brilliant, there are still many times when locking or hiding elements can be useful, especially when spending a lot of time focusing on smaller parts of a larger overall illustration.

Since there’s no way to unlock a specific object, most pros will Unlock all, Shift-click on the object they want unlocked (which deselects it), and then Lock in quick succession. Same applies for Hide/Show.

YUMMY PASTE
Paste was delicious when you were younger, and just because you’ve grown up, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it now. The Paste command in Illustrator places art in the center of your screen, but you can also paste objects in place — either in front or in back. For those who were familiar with FreeHand, Paste in Front is the same as the feature once known as Clone. Paste in Front and Paste in Back are also helpful when you want pasted objects to be placed within groups or masks.

PAN AND ZOOM
The Zoom tool and the Hand tool should be treated like museum artifacts—they can be looked at, but are not to be touched. Truth be told, those scroll bars along the bottom and right edge of your document are also off-limits. Learn the power moves to quickly navigate within your documents.

A particular problem one runs into is that when you’re editing text, you can’t press Space to switch to the Hand tool, as doing so will actually add space characters to your text string. In those cases, this secret handshake will give you joy: Press Cmd-Space [Ctrl-Space] to access the Zoom tool, and then release just the Cmd [Ctrl] key, while still holding Space. This will give you the Hand tool. Release to return to editing your text with the Type tool.

Since we’re talking about navigating within documents, these are helpful as well:

Cmd-` [Ctrl-`]: That’s a Tilde, which appears just over your Tab key on US keyboards, and allows you to toggle between open tabbed documents.

EFFECTIVE EFFECTS
You want to quickly add a few drop shadows, but want to make sure they all use the same settings. Sure, you could define a Graphic Style, but that’s too much of a bother, right? Instead, use a quick power move.

Shift-Cmd-E [Shift-Ctrl-E]: Apply last-used effect with the same settings.Shift-Cmd-Option-E [Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E]: Bring up the dialog box of the last-used effect.

PATHFINDER, RINSE, REPEAT
The Pathfinder functions—specifically Unite (Add), Minus Front (Subtract), and Divide—are used constantly when creating artwork in Illustrator. True, I’m a big fan of the newer Live Paint functionality in Illustrator, but for quick fixes here and there, Pathfinder proves valuable. While there aren’t keyboard shortcuts for the Pathfinder functions (in theory, you could always define an Action for them and apply a shortcut to the Action), there is a power move to re-apply a Pathfinder function—helpful for when you’re performing lots of shape editing—especially since you don’t have to shuttle your cursor between your art and a floating panel.

33 comments:

Thanks for this article. Always something one has missed or forgotten.

My most used Power Shortcuts that are not mentioned there are:

1. Everyone knows the Tracking/Kerning shortcuts Option + Arrows Left or Right. Add Command to that combo to make it really powerful.

2. You may have gone to far with your Tracking or Kerning. You can zero it in one click with Option + Command + Q.

3. To get the Character Panel open one usually clicks Command + T. But if you use Shift + Option + Command + F, you open the Character Panel and hi-lights the fonts name. Works too if the panel is open.

4. Changing the size of type with Shift + Command + Comma or Period, can be made ten times as powerful by adding Options to that combo.

Thanks Mordy, this is really useful... I never saw an explanation which provided a memnomic for the two pointer tool shortcut keys.

I tend to think of Transform again (clover-D) as a power move because so often a transformation needs one more iteration to get it just so.

My documents tend to have between 100 and 500 layers... I move things between layers so often that the "Send to current layer" command (once I assign a keystroke to it) saves me an epic amount of dragging within the layer palette.

I must disagree about the EFFECTIVE EFFECTS shortcut. Short term your method may be quicker, but if you take the few extra seconds to create a Graphic Style, then any change you make in the future to the style will be reflected by all items using it, which is much more of a timesaver in the long run.

Hi Mordy,I just want to add one of my favourite trick (almost explained in your post);Cmd-F [Ctrl-F] and Cmd-B [Ctrl-B] are often faster (and the shortcuts are easier to remember) than send to back and bring to front command. Just cut the object that you want to move then select another object. If you use Cmd-F or Cmd-B or behind, the pasted element will be placed directly in front or behind the selected object.

Great article -- I think I'll print it out and tape it to the side of my Mac, until I memorize them!

I create lots of info graphics with many labels. It slows me down to constantly move the cursor to the tools palette to switch from the type tool to the selection tool, so I can reposition the label I just created. After entering or editing text, I hold down the Command key and click away from the text box to de-select it. I can then type a V or an A to select the appropriate tool, without accidentally adding a character to my text box. Same results as Shift-Command-A, but sometimes a little easier than simultaneously pressing three keys.

In Yummy Paste it should say Paste in front or back of the SELECTED object because after copying or cutting to the clipboard you can select something else & paste the clipboard contents relative to that object.

If you add Option [Alt] when using the Pathfinder to expand the effect & then Cmd-4 [Ctrl-4] to repeat it, it is not expanded :>(

I tried this for accessing the hand tool while typing (in Illustrator CS5):"Press Cmd-Space [Ctrl-Space] to access the Zoom tool, and then release just the Cmd [Ctrl] key, while still holding Space"You can access the hand tool, but it still adds space to your text.

Ctrl+Shift+[ and ] doesn't increase the font size, only the spacing between the characters.

Thank you so much for addressing the nudge tool! I have been hunting for a shortcut for this feature for awhile. As a former Corel user, I loved the nudge feature and relied on it pretty heavily especially when drawing to scale. SO HAPPY that I found this blog. THANK YOU!!!

Something I use continuously in illustrator is a script that divides a path into a number of segments. You can get the script here: http://shspage.com/aijs/en/#divide I have it inserted into an action as a menu item. Then I have shortcut assigned to that action. I do this for a number of scripts but this one a use all the time.

Something I use continuously in illustrator is a script that divides a path into a number of segments. You can get the script here: http://shspage.com/aijs/en/#divide I have it inserted into an action as a menu item. Then I have shortcut assigned to that action. I do this for a number of scripts but this one a use all the time.

The most useful Illustrator command I know is Command+U (Control + U in Windows). Why is that? Because Illustrator invariable pouts points or modifies paths in whays that I newer intended so I need to 'undo' the last action (or series of actions) and try again... and again... and sometimes even again... It's a process of negotiation in which I try to force Illustrator to do what I want it to do and it politely but firmly refuses to do it until I compromise.